Tag Archives: impeachment

national news

Yearning for a return to civility

I am a fan of civil political discourse, and of compromise when it can produce a common good, and of political adversaries remaining friends when the battle of the day has concluded.

Thus, I am yearning for a return — please pardon my borrowing a phrase coined by a former U.S. president — to a “kinder, gentler time” in American political life.

The late George H.W. Bush sought such a return when he took office in 1989. It was there, then it was gone.

It’s gotten much worse since Donald Trump entered political life in the summer of 2015. Indeed, he helped foment some of the intense anger even before then, feeding the Big Lie about President Barack Obama’s citizenship status, becoming the de facto godfather of the “birther” movement.

OK, he’s now the current president. The House of Representatives has impeached him. Trump is now getting ready to stand trial in the  Senate.

I won’t venture off the conventional wisdom trail here. I believe he will survive the trial. He will stay in office. Trump then will run for re-election and he will feed the intense anger that will continue to simmer and boil until Election Day 2020.

It’s my desire for a return to political civility, collegiality and comity that makes me yearn for his defeat next year. Trump has shown an unwillingness to bridge the divide among disparate Americans. Indeed, he seeks to widen it.

Thus, as he campaigns for re-election I fully expect the president to keep reminding us of the impeachment drama that is playing out at this moment. He will continue to hurl epithets at his foes. Trump will attach sophomoric nicknames to them. The president will seek to fuel the rage at the system that got him elected in the first place.

What if he wins? Oh, my! We’ll get four more years of practically everything I have just described. There likely will be a new wrinkle or three thrown in for good measure.

I’ll try to do my part to dial it back by refraining from some of the harsh rhetoric I have spouted in this forum since Trump crashed onto the political scene. Trump is a lead-pipe cinch, though, to test that pledge with what he is likely to say out loud over the course of the next year.

Take note: I haven’t hurled a single epithet at him in this post.

Hey, it’s a start. My hope springs eternal that we’ll be able to return sooner rather than later to a kinder, gentler political era.

national news

Love, not hate, drove House to impeach Trump

The rhetoric coming from Donald Trump’s allies that those who impeached him “hate” the president more than they love the country is maddening in the extreme.

I am going to continue to hold in my soul and heart that love of country drove those who voted to impeach the president, not any hate toward the man.

That might sound Pollyannish to some readers of this blog. They are welcome to challenge my view, but I will hold fast to it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed specifically her “love of country” when she asked the House to draft articles of impeachment. I have no reason to disbelieve her, nor do I disbelieve the stated motives that steered those who impeached the president. They are concerned, as many of us out here in the heartland are concerned, about the abuses brought by Trump to the office he holds and the damage it might do to that office over time long after he vacates it.

To be sure the nation is more divided perhaps than at any time since the Vietnam War. The nation healed those wounds. It healed after Watergate. It healed after the hotly contested 2000 presidential election.

I have abiding faith in our nation’s ability to heal after Trump’s tenure has expired. I also will retain my belief in the stated motives of those who made history with their decision to impeach the president.

I believe they love our country enough to want to save it.

Uncategorized

By golly, the state of our Union is strong

This will be one of the more intriguing State of the Union speeches Americans will have heard in a while.

Donald Trump has accepted U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to deliver a State of the Union speech on Feb. 2. The president well might be on trial in the U.S. Senate when he steps to the microphone before a joint congressional session. Or, the trial might be over.

Whatever the case, the president will have a chance to declare the condition of our Union. You know what? If he says it is “strong,” I will have to agree.

Yes, we are in the midst of a tremendous and terrible constitutional crisis. The president has been impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The nation is divided deeply over how this impeachment should conclude. Millions of Americans want Trump to be cleared. Millions of other Americans — including me — want him booted out of office in the wake of a Senate conviction.

Through all of this, though, it is good to reflect on the system of government that our founders created. A good part of the founders’ genius is that they built in protections to shore up our government in the event of crises such as this one.

The separation of powers is one such protection. The presidency isn’t nearly as powerful as Trump seems to suggest it is; the president cannot “whatever he wants.” The founders handed out equal doses of power to Congress and to the judiciary. So, whatever happens in the Senate trial, the nation will survive. Our Constitution will have done its job.

The president’s declaration, if he chooses to make it, that our “Union is strong” likely will draw catcalls and jeers from the Democratic side of the congressional chamber. Indeed, I await watching the body language that Pelosi will exhibit along with her Democratic colleagues gathered before her, the vice president and the president.

Such a reaction would ignore what I believe is quite clear.

Which is that despite the trouble we are in, despite the abuses that Donald Trump has heaped upon the presidency and the high crimes and misdemeanors I believe he has committed, our Union remains steady and strong.

national news

Bring on the witnesses, and then have that trial in the Senate

(Photo by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not making an unreasonable demand on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The House has impeached the current president of the United States, Donald Trump. The Senate is now slated eventually to hold a trial to determine whether he should be convicted of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Pelosi wants witnesses called and documentation offered. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer agrees with the speaker. He wants a trial with witnesses, just as what occurred during the Senate trials of Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.

Without them, the nation will get a show trial.

Let’s understand, too, that Democrats want to hear from former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former White House counsel Don McGahn. What do they have in common? They’re all Trump allies.

Might they provide testimony that works in Trump’s favor? Sure. Might they have something damaging to offer? You bet. Trials need to include witnesses and documentary evidence.

McConnell mustn’t be allowed to stonewall this process the way Trump has done throughout the House impeachment inquiry.

Senators are going home for Christmas. They well might hear from their constituents who could demand they adhere to demands to call witnesses. If they listen to and heed those demands, then we might actually get a serious trial conducted under the rules of evidence.

If McConnell wants to shield these witnesses from public scrutiny, then I believe we’re entitled to presume that he has something to hide from the country.

religious news

Christianity Today delivers the goods

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The Rev. Billy Graham would be proud … I believe.

Christianity Today, the magazine founded by America’s Pastor, has delivered a stunning rebuke of the current president who has courted the evangelical movement as if he actually believed the teachings offered in the New Testament.

The publication has called for Trump’s removal from office. Read the analysis here.

The essay is written by editor in chief Mark Galli, who declares that Trump’s ethical incompetence and “moral deficiencies” render him unfit for high office.

Galli’s essay does take Democrats to task for having it in for Trump all along and for the nature of the impeachment process. Still, the publication’s editor states: But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

Does this essay now mean that millions of evangelical movement votes will abandon the president? Hardly. It does, though, suggest a leading Christian publication has retained a significant sense of outrage over a man who pretends to be faithful to Christian teachings.

This individual isn’t faithful to anything other than to his own well-being, his own poll standing, his own political future.

It appears to me that Christianity Today has, shall we say, found some necessary religion.

The Rev. Billy Graham is looking down on this world with a smile on his face.

national news

Defending the indefensible?

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham has inherited the toughest job on Earth: trying to defend the indefensible snarkiness from the current president of the United States.

Grisham gave it a shot this morning, saying that Donald Trump is a “counter puncher” in her effort to defend Trump’s hideous insult last night that implied that the late U.S. Rep. John Dingell is in hell.

Maybe you heard Trump say it. He was talking about Dingell’s wife, Debbie, who voted in the House to impeach Trump. Trump rambled on about Dingell “looking down” on his wife, then added, “maybe he was looking up. I don’t know.”

You could hear the audible groan from the rally crowd gathered in Battle Creek, Mich., in the home state where John Dingell served in Congress longer than anyone in U.S. history.

Trump didn’t back off.

Neither did Grisham this morning on “Good Morning America.” But really? Declaring that Trump is a “counter puncher” as a defense against the latest utterly tasteless, crass and reprehensible remark to flow out of POTUS’s pie hole?

Disgraceful.

national news

Rep. Gabbard chokes on impeachment vote

Man, I hate thinking this about a military veteran who is running for the presidency of the United States … but it looks as though Rep. Tulsi Gabbard exhibited a cowardly trait in voting “present” on whether to impeach Donald J. Trump.

Gabbard’s vote will need some explanation. I am sure the media that are covering her presidential campaign will be primed to ask her about that non-vote.

I don’t even know what a “present” vote is supposed to mean. Was she unwilling to vote on either side of the two impeachment articles? Was she undecided? Why not just, um, not vote?

I might have been willing to give Rep. Gabbard some serious consideration as a Democratic candidate for president.

Until tonight.

national news

Overturn an election result? Well … yeah!

Congressional Republicans argue against the impeachment of Donald Trump on the basis of a belief that Democrats are seeking to “overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election.”

Hmm. You know, at one level I actually agree with that view.

However, here’s the deal: Three of the four presidential impeachments in this nation’s history have been intended to do that very thing. President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment in 1868 didn’t seek to overturn the preceding election; the nation re-elected President Lincoln in 1864 as the Civil War was still raging, but then the president was shot to death in April 1865, allowing Vice President Johnson to ascend to the presidency.

President Nixon was going to be impeached in 1974 before he quit the presidency. President Clinton was impeached in 1998. Did Democrats seek to overturn Nixon’s landslide re-election in 1972? Did Republicans want to do the same thing when they impeached Clinton in 1998 after he had won re-election in 1996? Well, yeah! They did!

So what is the rationale for this argument? Local officials are subject to recall petitions when they mess up. They, too, are elected to their office. Recall movements, therefore, are intended to “overturn” those results.

All this being said, I am not the least bit moved by the argument that an impeachment of a president is an effort to overturn an election. We can argue about the motives, I suppose, of why one side wants to impeach a president.

There can be no argument, though, on the consequence of such an act. Of course it reverses the result of the previous election. That’s what impeachment, I am willing to argue, is all about.

national news

House members are not listening to each other

Congressional Democrats are yapping about their desire to impeach the current president of the United States, Donald Trump.

Congressional Republicans are yammering about their opposition to their colleagues on the other side of the House floor.

They all are talking past each other. No one is listening to a word those on the other side are saying. Their minds are made up. They are making brief speeches. I suppose they are looking for a moment to shine before Americans who might be watching on TV. I happen to one of them.

I am not being persuaded by congressional Republicans. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are preaching to the proverbial choir.

The exercise we are witnessing on the floor of the House of Representatives is a waste of time. It’s time to vote. Impeach the president and send this matter down the hall to the Senate.

national news

Imagine another president doing this

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I want to let a six-page letter that Donald Trump, the current president of the United States, sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stand more or less on its own.

Read it here.

It’s pretty angry. I am trying to imagine another president who was impeached by a House of Representatives controlled by the opposing party sending something this angry to the speaker.

I am referring, of course, to Democratic President Bill Clinton, who in 1998 was impeached by the House led by Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich. Did the president fire off a screed such as this? Did he impugn the motives, the integrity, the patriotism of his foes? I don’t recall that kind of rhetoric coming from the president himself; yes, he had many allies speak publicly on his behalf.

Oh, the president surely thought such things about the GOP speaker. He might even have told him so — privately.

The letter attached to this brief post is the ranting of an angry and seemingly desperate man who, interestingly, is likely to survive the Senate trial that will result from the House impeachment.

Weird. Simply weird.